


Ghouls just wanna have fun

by CheapLemonIceLolly



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (not really) - Freeform, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, a spooooooky ghost story, short and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 02:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16844941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapLemonIceLolly/pseuds/CheapLemonIceLolly
Summary: "Hey, so, um.  Don’t laugh at me.  But I’m pretty sure my apartment is haunted."Auston looks up from untaping his sock expecting to get the punchline of a dumb joke, but Mitch doesn’t say anything else, just stares back at him with slightly wide eyes."Haunted," Auston says flatly."Yeah," says Mitch, glancing around.  He lowers his voice conspiratorially, leaning in.  "By aghost."





	Ghouls just wanna have fun

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I wrote this literally days before the revelation (through What's in the Box and Carlton the Scare Bear) that Auston is a big scaredy cat who is terrified of everything. If I'd known that in advance, this would have been quite a different fic! But here we are. If you follow me on Tumblr @lemonicelolly you've already seen this one, but all the recent drama has reminded me I really ought to backup prompt fic over here just in case. The anonymous prompt that inspired this was "something with Mitch/Auston taking care of each other," and the fact it was late October at the time :)

"Hey, so, um. Don’t laugh at me. But I’m pretty sure my apartment is haunted."

Auston looks up from untaping his sock expecting to get the punchline of a dumb joke, but Mitch doesn’t say anything else, just stares back at him with slightly wide eyes.

"Haunted," Auston says flatly.

"Yeah," says Mitch, glancing around. He lowers his voice conspiratorially, leaning in. "By a _ghost_."

"Have you been watching the Haunting of Hill House at night again?"

"No!" he frowns. "Alright, yes. But I don’t think that’s it, man, it’s not my imagination. There’s definitely something, like...creepy happening."

"Creepy like what?"

Mitch scrunches his face up. He keeps his voice soft, like he doesn’t want any of the other guys to overhear. "I don’t know, like...things not being where I left them all the time? And there’s this weird freezing cold patch on one side of my bed and shit. And today when I was napping on the couch the tv just turned itself on and scared the shit out of me."

"You probably just rolled over onto the remote," Auston reasons, going back to his socks. Mitch sighs.

"I guess," he says, and his small unhappy voice makes Auston look up again. He looks kind of terrible, now Auston’s actually paying attention, like maybe he hasn’t been sleeping properly for a while. And like, obviously Auston doesn’t believe his apartment is _haunted by a ghost_ , but if _Mitch_ believes it enough that it’s wrecking his sleep…

"D’you want me to come over and check it out?" he says, a little wearily. Mitch perks up immediately.

"Would you?" he says. "That’d be great, actually, then I’ll know it’s not just me. Just don’t tell anyone or the guys’ll roast me for believing in ghosts."

Auston’s not entirely sure why he isn’t roasting Mitch for believing in ghosts himself, but something about the way his face lights up at the offer of help makes him want to...well, actually help. He can always chirp him later when the ghost turns out to be a faulty thermostat and Mitch forgetting which day the cleaning service comes in, or whatever.

"Sure," he says. "We’ve got the night off tomorrow, right? I’ll come over once it gets dark."

"Good idea," Mitch nods seriously. "Ghosts are way more active at night."

Auston manages not to laugh, but it’s a near thing.

He turns up to Mitch’s apartment the next night fully armed.

"What _is_ all this?" Mitch says, sticking his nose in the plastic Metro bag Auston hands him while he unloads stuff from two others onto Mitch’s couch. "Candles, salt...what’s the picture book for?"

"It was supposed to be a bible," Auston says. "But I couldn’t find one on short notice." He figured _A Child’s Treasury of Prayers_ was probably close enough for a fake exorcism, anyway.

"Are these candles battery operated?" Mitch says, turning one upside down.

"Safety first," Auston tells him. "Don’t want to set your house on fire if the ghost decides to get nasty. There are batteries somewhere, try in that bag with the basil."

Mitch gives him a dark look. "Okay, now you’re making fun of me."

"No I’m not," Auston says, waving his hands at all the junk spread out on the cushions in between them. "I got all the stuff we need to do an exorcism, look. Okay, so the basil’s meant to be sage, but I’m pretty sure it’s _basically_ the same."

He watches Mitch pick skeptically through the exorcism supplies, his thin face unusually serious. "Alright…" he says slowly. "Since when do you know anything about doing exorcisms?"

"I looked it up on wikiHow," Auston admits. That at least gets Mitch to crack a smile, even if it’s only a ghost - _ha_ \- of the smiles Auston’s used to seeing from him. He misses Mitch’s pre-ghost smile.

"And the skittles?"

Auston shrugs. "Those are just for you."

That one earns him a real smile.

Mitch gives him the ghost tour of the apartment, which includes a general survey of all the places Mitch has left something and then not been able to find it later, and then standing very still at the end of the hallway where the bathroom is while Mitch says "shh!" every time Auston tries to ask what they’re waiting for.

"There!" he says urgently, after nothing in particular happens. "How do you explain that?"

"Uh," Auston raises his eyebrows. "Explain what, your neighbour flushing the toilet?"

"What? No way," says Mitch, "that was way spookier than a toilet. A toilet’d be like...kshhhh but this is more of a whhhssshhhhhh sound."

Auston grins. "Maybe your neighbour’s got one of those fancy toilets that washes your ass for you. That probably makes a spookier noise."

"I feel like you’re not taking this seriously," Mitch tells him, and pops a skittle in his mouth.

"Okay, you can’t explain this one away. The freaky cold spot is _definitely_ real."

Auston does have to give it to him on that one. He’s lying on one side of Mitch’s bed - the side he knows Mitch must sleep on most of the time, because it’s closest to the window and he always has to have the window-side bed when they share a room on the road - and there’s a distinct chill here that’s colder than the rest of the room. When he looks over towards the window, he can see Mitch reflected in the darkened glass, propped up on one elbow on the other side of the bed. He looks kind of like a ghost himself, all pale and soft around the edges in the reflection, but he’s lying close enough that Auston can feel the heat of his body radiating off him, very much alive.

"Hmm," he says.

"No, come on," says Mitch. He reaches out and touches Auston’s bare forearm, the one closest to him, and then leans right across his body to give the other arm the same treatment. He’s close enough for Auston to see his individual eyelashes. "See? You’ve got, like, goosebumps. I’ve got the thermostat set at twenty three, it shouldn’t be cold in here. That’s, like, seventy-something in American."

Auston rolls his eyes. "I’ve been here for two years, I can understand your weird made up temperatures now," he says, rubbing his arm where Mitch touched him. His skin feels tingly. Maybe there is something to the ghost thing, after all, just here in the bedroom. He feels all cold and hot at the same time lying here with Mitch basically plastered to his side with his grabby hands and his ridiculous eyelashes. Auston’s pulse seems a little quicker than normal, too, like some unknown sixth sense is kicking in for the first time.

"Come on, tell me you don’t feel it," says Mitch. Auston looks up at him, and their eyes lock for just a split second that somehow feels far too long. Auston actually shivers.

He feels… _something_.

"Sure," he says hurriedly, sitting up and turning away towards the window. His reflection looks like he really has seen a ghost.

"So, do you think we should do it?" says Mitch. Auston’s heart jumps in his chest.

"What?"

"The exorcism," Mitch says. "Can’t hurt, right?"

Since Auston’s pretty sure both ghosts and exorcisms are not real, he supposes that’s probably true. And it’ll probably make Mitch feel better, even if it doesn’t actually solve anything. He doesn’t know if it’ll make him feel better, but...worth a shot.

"Yeah," he says, more confidently than he feels. "Let’s do it."

"Spirit we, uh...mean you no harm," Auston says, feeling like an idiot as he fumbles with the matches, "but um...begone from this place, or whatever."

Mitch snorts and scrunches up his face, which would kind of ruin the spooky exorcism atmosphere, except that this whole process feels completely stupid to Auston as well. "Maybe you’re supposed to use, like, _dried_ basil?"

"You’re not supposed to use basil at all," Auston grunts, trying to light the very fresh and floppy green bundle of leaves for the fifth time. "Sage must just be more flammable."

"I think my mom left some dried oregano in the kitchen," Mitch says, and then giggles and drops his handful of basil. Luckily it is absolutely impossible to light on fire, because it lands on the carpet between them and Mitch immediately steps on it.

"Aw shit," he says, "that’s going to stain."

Auston drops down to pick up the basil, only Mitch does the same thing at the same time, and instead of either of them getting it they knock their heads together and both fall over. Auston falls on his ass and Mitch sort of stumbles over on top of him, one hand on his shoulder and feet all tangled with Auston’s legs, and the momentum of his fall sends Auston toppling backwards into the window where his head collides with the glass: _thunk_.

"Fuck, are you okay?" Mitch says, reaching instinctively for Auston’s head, which feels maybe a little bruised but otherwise fine. That’s not what Auston’s worried about right now anyway. He’s looking straight up the length of the floor-to-ceiling window above his head, and from this angle…

"Uh, how long has your window been open?" he says. Mitch looks up. His eyes widen.

"What? I didn’t even know that window _could_ open!"

They both stare up at the very clearly cracked-open window for a long moment. Then Auston starts to laugh.

"Oh my _god_ ," says Mitch.

"So, just to be clear, your _haunting_ ," Auston says, looking at the mess of DIY exorcist paraphernalia spread across the bedroom floor, "turned out to be a loud toilet, you forgetting where you left your shit, and a fucking open window."

Mitch just gapes at him, which only makes Auston laugh harder.

"No, no, come on," Mitch says. "Alright, the window, but over on the bed before, that weird electric kind of feeling, you felt that too, I know you did."

Auston stops laughing. It’s true, he did definitely feel something before. But now the haunting has revealed itself to be totally mundane, and now Mitch is leaning into him against the window, a warm weight against his legs, his eyes big and blue and insistently wide and his soft, expressive mouth incredibly close, Auston’s pretty sure he understands what that was all about.

"I don’t think that was ghosts, dude."

When Auston kisses Mitch, he smells like fresh basil and tastes like skittles. 

There’s this terrifyingly long moment when Auston thinks maybe he was wrong, maybe his tingly not-a-ghost feelings were entirely one-sided and he’s just made a really big mistake. But then Mitch’s arms come up around his neck and he’s kissing him back, as eager and sweet as Mitch ever does anything. So eager, in fact, that he knocks Auston’s head back into the window again.

"Ow," Auston says.

"Oops, sorry," Mitch winces. "I’m just...I’m really glad you’re not a ghost."

Auston grins and kisses him again. "Same," he says. Then he looks around at the mess and sighs. "Seems a shame to waste all this ghost hunting equipment, though."

"This doesn’t feel like a waste to me," Mitch tells him, punctuating it with another kiss, and another, until Auston loses count.

He’s got a point.


End file.
